


Open For Discussion

by imkerfuffled



Series: Tumblr Prompts [6]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen, what do you mean i can write things that aren't dialogue?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 20:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8299231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: Twenty years before the events of A New Oath, two young Jedi Knights and a Council member discuss prophecies in the aftermath of the first Separatist crisis.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The other day I got sent a few drabble prompts over on tumblr, three of which I wrote, and one of which I completely forgot to do. I think originally I was planning on doing another star trek thing, but then the prompt sort of collided with some ideas I'd had about how to translate the whole ~Anakin is the Chosen One~ thing to my yw/sw crossover, which then collided with some other ideas about fleshing out the prequels-era timeline in this AU, which then ended in a "hey, wouldn't this be neat." I was planning to introduce the prophecy a few chapters on in ANO (in a chapter whose only description in my outline is "Tom and Carl's chapter." This is despite every other chapter having multi-paragraph outlines, with the sole exception being the one-word outline for the last chapter. Make of that what you will.) But I decided what the hell, let's write this.
> 
> This takes place shortly after the crossover equivalent of Phantom Menace, with Tom and Carl being recently knighted in their early twenties.
> 
> Also: I'm not so much dropping hints as subtly side-eyeing a future plot twist here. And that's not including any of the plot twists already inherent in the Star Wars / Young Wizards universes.

Carl knew there was something wrong when he saw Mamvish approaching the tree that he and Tom used for sparring practice. Her ambling gait lacked its usual bounce, and her tail drooped near to the ground.

Catching Tom’s eye, Carl twitched his head in her direction, and Tom turned around.

“Oh, hey, Mamvish. _Dai stihó_ ,” Tom said. Both he and Carl deactivated their lightsabers and returned them to their belts in exact synchrony.

“Cute,” Mamvish said as she reached the shade of the tree. She stood motionless for a second, then flopped onto her side with a ground-shaking _thump._ Tom and Carl took that as a cue to sit down as well.

“Let me guess, the Council’s bickering again?” Tom said, leaning back against the tree trunk.

In response, her hide flashed a dozen different colors, and she began thrashing her tail like a whipcord. “I have been stuck,” she hissed, “ _all day_ in meetings. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to sit in that _rijakh’_ d little chair for twelve hours listening to a bunch of—” She paused suddenly and took a deep breath. When she spoke again her jaw pulled back in an insincere smile. “—very _wise, intelligent_ beings who have only the galaxy’s best interest at heart _squabbling_ like hatchlings!”

Tom grimaced in sympathy, while Carl looked surprised. “Are they still debating over the siege of Ireland?”

“No, thank the Powers. Though if it was up to Iskard, we would be.” Mamvish rolled her eyes. “Luckily Ae’mhnuu realized pretty early on that Dunbar and Callahan hadn’t gotten hardly any sleep since it ended, so he sent them off. And we’d already debated most of what we could by then, so we just moved on to...” Abruptly, she stopped. Her eyes swiveled forward to point in two different angles, one trained on Tom and the other on Carl with sudden intensity.

“If you can’t tell us, we understand,” Tom said.

“No, no,” Mamvish said absentmindedly, “Do you know anything about prophecies?”

Carl wobbled his hand back and forth to indicate his incomplete knowledge of the subject, and Tom nodded.

“I thought you might,” Mamvish said to Tom, “Have you ever heard of the Three True Things prophecy?”

“Of course,” Tom said. Then he frowned. “You don’t think…?”

“That it’s coming to pass? Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing the Council can agree on,” Mamvish said.

“Hang on. I might be a little rusty on my knowledge of ancient prophecies,” Carl said, drawing back in alarm, “But isn’t that the one about the end of the galaxy?”

Tom and Mamvish exchanged a glance. “Well…” Tom began.

“It’s complicated,” Mamvish said.

“In its entirety,” Tom said, “it reads: _Three true things await discovery,_

_“Darkness overspreading,_

_A commorancy underground:_  
_And the Moon is no dream—”_

“‘Darkness overspreading,’” Carl repeated, frowning pensively, “You mean the Lone Power winning.”

Tom nodded. “That part is fairly straightforward, no matter how it’s interpreted. But as for the rest, scholars have argued over its meaning for millennia, and we’re no closer to understanding it.”

“It’s old enough to be written in the Speech, right? I’ll bet that can’t help,” Carl said.

Mamvish let out a hiss of frustration. “You’ve got that right. There are at least five different translations of ‘moon’ that could apply here, seven of ‘overspreading,’ and don’t even get me started on ‘commorancy!’” Her tail started lashing again, sending light tremors through the ground. “The only clue we have to go on for _that_ is an ancient footnote in a dusty old essay referencing Killiks.”

“They went extinct over ten thousand years ago,” Carl said.

“ _Exactly,”_ Mamvish growled, “Picchu is hard enough to understand, but at least we know what _words_ she’s saying. Not that it helped us any here. She kept squawking ‘The light’s granddaughter is darkness,’ which we wasted an hour and a half getting nowhere with.”

Carl’s cheeks puffed out as he let out a low, drawn out breath.

“You say this darkness is definitely coming? There isn’t any way you could have misinterpreted the signs?” Tom said after a moment, mirroring Carl’s expression.

“Tom, it isn’t coming. It already _came,”_ Mamvish said, her tone suddenly grave, “Slowly but surely, the balance of the Force is tipping to the dark side. I can feel the shift. Even if you prefer a more literal reading of the prophecy, this Pullulus aggregate is fairly damning evidence…” She trailed off when she saw the blank looks on their faces. “I take it Dunbar hasn’t filled you in yet on what happened?”

“We haven’t had many opportunities to talk since they got back,” Carl said, while Tom shook his head.

“Oh. Well, I guess it can’t hurt to tell you,” Mamvish said, “It’s… _something_ that affects local space, with no obvious cause that we can see beyond ‘the Lone One did it.’ Spontaneous generation of dark matter that stretches the fabric of the universe, literally ‘over-spreading’ it. The Irish Jedi enclave spotted it lurking at the edge of their system during the siege. Luckily they managed to drive it back with a local ritual of theirs, but we fear this was only the beginning. If more aggregates start appearing elsewhere—and I can’t see the Lone Power exerting all that energy only to give up after one defeat—it could mean the end of life in this galaxy.”

Carl stared at the ground, his brow furrowed, rubbing a finger across his mustache as he thought it through. “It attacks the hyperstring matrix, so that means everything relying on hyperspace would be incapacitated. Worldgates, intersystem travel and communication, the holonet… Everyone would be completely cut off from the rest of the galaxy.”

“Without the self-sufficiency we’d need to survive,” Tom added.

“The Interconnect Program would be completely useless to help worlds affected by the Pullulus if we couldn’t even reach the planets in the first place,” Mamvish said.

“Hyperspace beacons wouldn’t work either, not if the laws of physics were inconsistent across space,” Carl said, “Anyone who tried to jump would end up parsecs away from their target, or dumped in the middle of a star, or—stang, they’d be ripped apart like they were trying to cross the galaxy’s edge.”

“We’re already at risk for civil war. This, the mass hysteria it would cause, it’d be like dropping a thermal detonator in a tibanna gas mine,” Tom said.

“And as soon as hyperspace lanes stopped working, people would turn that panic inward and continue the war on their own planets. Add to that the changes to thought processes you’d get from a thinning hyperstring matrix, and even species like the Caamasi would become genocidal.”

“Not ‘would,’” Mamvish said, “‘Will.’”

A hushed silence fell over them all as the magnitude of her news began to sink in. As Jedi, they all fought the dark side and its creator on a daily basis, but most interventions only had the potential to affect localized areas: individual planets and star systems. No one in living memory—not even Jedi such as Mamvish, who lived for thousands of years—had ever faced a threat that endangered anything on a galactic level.

After a moment, Carl’s expression hardened, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s got to be something we can do to stop this.”

Mamvish hissed again. “That’s the _other_ thing the Council agrees on. Despite its vagueness, there’s no wiggle room in the prophecy; it will definitely come to pass. Though, that doesn’t necessarily mean the galaxy’s going to end. For all we know, the last two lines could be the key to getting rid of the Pullulus, and we just don’t have a damned clue what they mean yet. But we all believe it’s best to assume the worst and work from there.”

“But there’s an ancillary prophecy that’s often cited with the Three True Things,” Tom argued, “ _that_ has to be our hope for winning this upcoming... this upcoming war.”

“Perhaps our only hope, according to some,” Mamvish said, her hide rippling. For Carl’s sake she added, “The Prophesy of the Chosen One. It states that in our hour of darkest need, someone will come to restore balance to the Force.”

“Sounds simple enough,” Carl said, “which probably means it’s near impossible to interpret correctly.”

Tom snorted ruefully. “Thousands of linguists and scholars and historians have picked over that prophecy, and they all have different ideas about what it means. At least a dozen different people have been incorrectly predicted to fulfil it over the years.”

“One of the leading schools of thought these days is that it actually refers to two people,” Mamvish said. Something in the way she said it made Tom and Carl give pause. “Some of the phrasing fits better with a plural subject, especially where it talks about duality. And we’ve identified over fifty different words in the Speech as various closely related pronouns, so it’s not such a stretch to think we may have mistranslated the set in this prophesy as singular.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that one,” Tom said, “There’s a line that mentions… something about brothers, I think, and that’s what made people start questioning the accepted interpretation.”

Mamvish nodded slowly, staring at the two of them with the same penetrating gaze that she had given them earlier when the topic of prophecies first came up. “What with the projected timelines for this ‘overspreading,’” she said, just as slowly and carefully as her nod, “there’s a good chance these Chosen Ones are already alive today. A lot of what we discussed at the Council meetings was trying to figure out who they could be.”

Tom and Carl narrowed their eyes and glanced at each other then back at Mamvish, picking up on the strange note in her voice. “Any potential candidates?” Tom asked.

“Well, Iskard predictably tried to push his daughter and that Barsoomian kid—what’s-his-name—Khretef,” Mamvish scoffed, rolling her eyes, “Although I will say it makes more sense than some of the other options.”

“Wait, his daughter the senator?” Carl said.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot you rescued—”

“No!” Tom cried suddenly, lunging sideways to slap his hands over Carl’s ears, “You’ll only feed his ego.”

Mamvish drew back in alarm and blinked mutely at them for several seconds.

“I’m sorry.” Tom returned to his former position on the grass, turning slightly red in the face. “It’s just that every time someone brings up the scorpion incident, he gets all smug about it.” He ended his sentence with a faux glare at his partner.

“It was a very heroic incident,” Carl deadpanned.

“It was reckless, and you nearly died.”

“Some would argue that’s what makes it heroic.”

“Others would argue that’s what makes people dead.”

“Irina thinks the prophecy might be referring to you two.”

Tom and Carl froze the moment they processed the words that had come out of Mamvish’s mouth, then spun to face her. “What?” they both said at the same time.

“You heard me,” she said, entirely serious again, “It makes a certain amount of sense, too.”

“But…” Carl choked, as Tom just repeatedly shook his head.

“If you think about it, a lot of the its descriptions of the Chosen One could easily apply to you,” Mamvish said, “You’re both young and powerful; you’ve dealt the Lone One and Its agents some fairly major blows in the past. You—” She nodded her head at Carl, then at Tom. “are mostly a fighter, and you’re mostly a researcher.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean…” Tom spluttered.

“There are even a few lines that imply the Chosen Ones have unconventional training, and both of your Masters were rather odd, to say the least,” Mamvish continued.

“You could say that about plenty of people,” Carl said.

“But really, the most interesting argument Irina made was the fact that your names get run together so often in Council meetings,” Mamvish said.

“ _What_?” Tom and Carl said at exactly the same time, with exactly the same expression of utter bewilderment.

“See, that right there is exactly what I’m talking about,” Mamvish said, “You’re so in sync, so inseparable, that we sometimes joke that you’re secretly a twychild. Like you’re almost one person.”

“Then find an actual twychild that fits the prophecy,” Tom said.

“And what about the… the brothers line? That doesn’t apply to us,” Carl added.

Once again, Mamvish rolled her eyes. “Tom, don’t you think that’s the very first thing we looked for, considering the ambiguity in the prophecy? And Carl, you’re just being deliberately thickheaded now. You know as well as Tom does how poetic these things can be, even using the Speech. Besides, with all the different ways that line has been translated, it could mean anything from siblings, to partners, to… I think one historian tried to argue ‘lovers.’”

“I’ll bet that idea never gained much traction,” Tom said, picking at a bit of grass by his leg.

“Not at all, but you get my point.”

For a second, everyone was quiet.

“Are you saying you actually believe this?” Carl said, though his voice had lost some of its incredulity.

Mamvish tilted her head from side to side, taking a few moments to answer. “No,” she said eventually, “But I’m not saying I don’t believe it either.” She paused again and frowned thoughtfully. “I’ve seen a lot of Jedi come and go, but you two? There’s something different about you. Something special. Prophecy or not, you’re going to be vitally important to our future, whatever that may turn out to be. I’m sure of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Killiks](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Killik) are an insectoid hive mind species from Alderaan that supposedly went extinct long before the events of the movies, when in reality they flew off to a secret planet in the Unknown Regions and get discovered by some evil Jedi thousands of years later. So you can see where the Yaldiv connection came from.
> 
> [Caamasi](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Caamasi) are the ultimate pacifist species, which Palpatine decided to wipe out because he is a massive dick and he hates happiness. Seriously, these people are so nice a friendly that they have an entire holiday called the Rainbow of Sunshine Festival. (That fact is not relevant to anything. I just wanted to share it).  


End file.
